Alone Together

When I think of being alone, it's the silence that makes that feeling a reality. It's the absence of discourse that forces you to be painfully aware it's just you in a room. Even when a room is full of people, and there is chatter in every crevice, if no one is speaking to you, it's the same as two strangers sitting on a park bench. They are alone, but together. 


I've experienced several kinds of silence in relationships. There was a silence where words weren't needed: a smile, a touch, a nod, a furrowed brow, or widened eyes. Even the subtleties of body language were an entirely enjoyable and understood conversation. 


Then there was silence where no words were adequate to explain what was happening. All I knew was the silence became deafening, and anything said would have cued an avalanche. That type of quiet makes you feel alone, misunderstood, unheard and completely disregarded, all while next to someone. It's that silence that makes two people start questioning the intent and sincerity of every word and action.


I've also experienced self-induced solitude. The kind that comes when you start cleaning the emotional closet. Categorizing people based on how they regard you or lack thereof. But there is no loneliness like being alone in a room full of people. There's no alone like walking into an event holding hands with someone you've just had a thirty-minute car ride quieter than the night before Christmas.  It makes me wonder how is loneliness greater in an overly connected world, or is it worst knowing that you're never alone, even when you always feel like it? And is silence and loneliness interchangeable?